What the hell are you talking about? How much does he earn? (Eromancer) - Does he get all the money from the cartridges?
The amount of money for each participant in this project is too small for them to work at least 5 hours a day.
P.S.- I don't defend him (Eromancer), but I try before you convey the idea that even a small game should be developed by a team of at least 30-50 people.
And to receive normal money, and not conditionally miserable $15,000-$18,000 for 12 people, it is not clear even a week or a month.
I rarely get triggered by bullshit but this time, I simply am astounded by the sheer ignorance or deliberate simplification of the problem.
Your "miserable" 15-18k$/month DIVIDED by 12 is enough to live a rather decent life in many countries because that's how a lot of game devs earn (it's one of the reasons why no one who cares about money goes into corporate game making). Money is not an issue here, they have enough to work full time on the freaking Azores or Canaries.
I had to double check my facts here but looks like I remember it well:
Average CDP Red dev earns around 1,8-2k$/month (let's remember that crunch is real). You may still use the "project scale" argument here...so, let's throw a different example - Madmind Studio (~25 people, responsible for Agony and Succubus) posted offers for seniors, mids and juniors a few months ago that were in range of something like 1-3k$, depending on the role. People responsible for Metro or Stalker series earned even less per person, with most of the money going to the leading guys.
Some developers worked for years on their projects and made an award winning masterpieces by themselves or with a little help, without much of the external funding.
Let's say the previous Eromancer's project was a success and they've learned a thing or two about game making and business...Knowing this, please tell me, how can you even consider that a project being done by "experienced" devs (sic) of that scale is still so far behind in terms of actual content and playability? Mechanics (if we can call it that) were done long time ago, a lot of models and levels are suspected to be done a year ago as well and only refined at this point.